To Read Is To Possess A Transference

"It is a regular observation that when you talk to an individual and this individual gives you insight into his inner preoccupations, interests, emotions, in other words, hands over his personal complexes, then you get slowly and really really into the situation of a sort of authority, you become a point of reference, you know you are in possession of all the important items in a person's development. Now you see, that creates an emotional relationship to the analyst, and that is what Freud calls the transference which is a central problem of analytic psychology. It is just so as if these people had handed out their whole existence and that can have very peculiar effects upon the individual; either they hate you for it or they love you for it, but you are not indifferent to them."

- Carl Jung, from "Matter of Heart" (Parts 4-5 on YouTube)  

________

A dream that will not drift from memory begins where I stand carefree in an old-fashioned English telephone booth on a paved street corner. There is a usual urban backdrop. The telephone booth curiously extends upwards as upon a ladder to unknown heights, yet I am unmotivated to climb it, especially as I am attacked on all sides! Furious, battered felines of all shapes and sizes, tattered and dusty, some with thick coats and others with scrawny short-haired bodies, skeletal and mangy fiercely claw at me. Their hissing and deviltry is a forewarning to my native sense, as I only barely escape their wrath, fighting them off after an intensely overwhelming standoff. 

________

Cat

“To dream of a cat denotes ill luck, if you do not succeed in killing it or driving it from your sight. If the cat attacks you, you will have enemies who will go to any extreme to blacken your reputation and to cause you loss of property. But if you succeed in banishing it, you will overcome great obstacles and rise in fortune and fame.

If you meet a thin, mean and dirty-looking cat, you will have bad news from the absent. Some friend lies at death’s door, but if you chase it out of sight, your friend will recover after a long and lingering sickness.” (iDream)

________

The willing sink in their seats.
Pure elements rain on the few.
They are felt, inspired.

The air is too hot.
It is dreamed with steam and smoke.
Waking is consumed with the taste of ash.

The Phoenix appears in ultimate silence.

Insects and weather play in hiding.
It is no theft, distraction, or hiding.
yet imbued with meaning.

Blink and you will see.

- excerpt from "An attempt at ethnographic science!" 

Sleep - Hypnosis - Dream - Film/Create - Sleep

"TOO MUCH DREAM NO LIFE" from "Rated R For Nudity" by Dennis Villaneuve, director of Oscar Nominated Incendies, adapted from the play by Wajdi Mouawad 

"You have just declared war on the artists. 

Now, as one functionary to another, this is the second thing that I wanted to tell you: no government, in showing contempt for artists, has ever been able to survive. Not one. One can, of course, ignore them, corrupt them, seduce them, buy them, censor them, kill them, send them to camps, spy on them, but hold them in contempt, no. That is akin to rupturing the strange pact, made millennia ago, between art and politics." 

- Wajdi Mouawad in an open letter to Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada

____________

What began as the preparation for a show soon became our entire reality. It was as if life itself began from the most unintentional and insignificant of moments. 

A soothing bike ride, me standing upon the frame, as my friend wheels down towards the river valley from the hills on which stand the university. This downward spiral towards the river soon etched in my memory as the outline of a theatre hall. Bike paths smoothed horizontally at the bottom of the hall, near to the stage, which seemed always so distant. 

It was there, on the stage, where my wife sleeplessly resides. I receive hint of this as I walk up the spiralling theatre, upwards toward the back entrance atop the sterling balconies. A wild goddess of the Flamenco guitar, relaxed, is winging a song in black straps and fine hair. From her effortless talent, she speaks of the upcoming show, that we’re all to perform at once, together. I am thankful to know of someone who knows. 

The washroom opens out from a small door, to a massive room, a two story, in which I stand on the balcony. Below two large pools of water are filled as chlorinated test sites of a kind. I accidentally pee over the edge of the balcony, just a touch. 

As I exit from the washroom, I find my mother, dragging on my sleeve; she is restless and sudden in her violent motions, tragically rushing to perceive my personal history. At the same time I practice my Xaphoon with exasperated over-exertion, until my chest caves in a whorl of a meandering tide, flushing me of all extant emotive energy. A wave of cataclysmic shock escalates from my belly, as I seethe in the inglorious aftermath of our parting. 

As I descend back down below the stage setting to prepare for the show and find my one and only love, who is also the centerpiece of the show, I abandon my mother, whose reckless desperation pilfers on a dusk-lit snowy hillock. She falls into the snow, beckoning me wholeheartedly, pleading with the strength of her unborn tears. I am silent and turn away. 

People begin talking behind me as I descend alone. The shuddering of friends and family bemoan my impoverished distance, as I stand before my bicycle, unknowingly unmatched the painful will of their unending pursuance. “Where is the child?” They call into a wasteland abyss of empty longing. My reputation dances on their imaginations, as successes and failures announce themselves under the thumb of their own figments of high and low, a personified blush with an instance of recognition amid the melting world order. 

I breakdown at my bike lock instilled with the inveterate blinking of innumerable eyes. “Where is my Love of always?” She is concealed behind a fortress of her own insistent distance, her own failed bodily doctoring. All the while, I sink in the ruthless pasture of my own blood, and its individuating soul.

________

Theatre

"To dream of being at a theatre, denotes that you will have much pleasure in the company of new friends. Your affairs will be satisfactory will be satisfactory after this dream. If you are one of the players, your pleasures will be of short duration" (iDream)

________

There are random lights amiss.
Television stares glide into time.

The stolen tool of history, on the back of a vanished piano-man ghost
listens to itself with a destructive attitude.

Famine touches up the spiritual sanity of highway fences.
We board the intuition that fails to comply with the original intent of a country, as idea of land.
And how do we face the sorry array of new experience reaching the faded heads of wealth-derived insight?

Ruminations detailed with a pertinent memory seek clarity as a process of several ordeals,
knowledge imbalances and physical immolation,
to understand with greater awe the only mystery
…continuity.

- excerpt from "An attempt at prose?"

Experiments With Conventional Dream Definition

"We believe warmth and brightness will return and renew all of the hopes of men. NO!!!"

"Let me put it this way, I don't think there's a deep concern about anything. I think there's a lot of, you know, there's sort of passing interest in things, but there's no real concern. It's doesn't mean it's a matter of conviction, again. People seem unwilling to become involved in anything. I mean, really."

Also by Arthur Lipsett, "[Free Fall] evokes a surrealist dream of our fall from grace into banality." (NFB)

___________

It’s the Floridian humidity. The silent pavement provides a buffer zone between the sweating plants and the lowering sky. Small mammals scurry mindfully in the thick brush beside these manicured pathways. A massive dome appears on our way. The recently past dusk threw a scintillating crepuscular finitude over the incredible structure. White-mounded, of chalky substance, the mound invited us with an easily accessible entranceway. An aqueous blue light hovers in a pallid mist throughout the sporadic lighting of a tunnel system. Globular shadows bloom over the fear-cast hideaway. “The deeper we press on, the more sheltered are the animals who dwell inside,” I peer into a subterranean passage, meant for a nocturnal fox. I turn back.

The next day, in the sweltering heat, I sit languorous with café atop a balconied precipice in an inner city restaurant. The muddied roads spell social friction as two heated rough bands of youth face off. The attitude about is apathetic, as resting feet mosey in careless to the disaffected gorge of violence in our immediate vicinity. I watch restlessly, bitter with remorse as the puffed chests of the youths splinter with strangled breath under their pitiful guise of torn flesh and mangled bones.

In the café, my wayward attention darts in the direction of a radiant presence. A world-class musician empties bellies of laughter and rays of his smiling countenance in all directions, especially meeting my eyes with his. We become acquainted. Over tea, he invites me to a concert of his in the evening. The concert hall is bedecked with the stylish wonders of the epoch. The bountiful core of human opulence shines in its full magnificence as the musician, a percussionist, gently plays a twin-headed gourd with a masterful split-finger technique, similar to the way one would play a hadgini. Bursts of mountainous excitement turn the crowd inside their beatific lives to a place more common to all. 

_________

Fox

"To dream of chasing a fox, denotes that you are engaging in doubtful speculations and risky love affairs." (iDream)

_________

The snowball effect and the end of humanity…

Pacification.
Air dead.
Noxious and looming.
Distracted meds fielding stringent commentary.

Of wrong.

Misinformed delusion.
Gray-haired wisdom.
Bold boom music.
Drunk on sleep.
Feeding extreme weak binge.

Insane night.

Wheeling through migrations
Globalizing responsibility.

For no one.

Healing engrossed savages
Inviolate demise.
Undone law.

Ruin.

Demeaned personality
Locked unmovable
Warm concrete.

Derailed western dream.

920pm. Feb 18. 10’

L.A., caged windowed building, pesto pasta and one cigarette

A Dream To Write What Matters

 Akashi Gidayu (writing his death poem before committing Seppuku) by Yoshitoshi Tsukioka c. 1890

My dream has been to craft writing that matters. I am motivated by a need to emphasize the direct spontaneity of mind as, in essence, a creative intuition, where through honing a creative craft, significance is placed on the world uniquely and honestly, without narrow frames of reference. I am interested in the whole being, including one's dreams which only reveal themselves in one's most private, trusted, spirit-bound state: sleep, or intoxication in a poetry which reflects the true, unadulterated nature of mind. 

Read my recent publication at ditch, the poetry that matters

__________

Sitting around a table at a cozy bookshop, I am unaware as to my true motivation and internally neglect my immediate surroundings. I sit around a group of people with small, cottage industry books, with handmade paper and designs painted right on. They are of all sizes and degrees of detail, mostly amateurish, though charming. Many sneer at me as I handle five-stacked copies of poets.org magazine. People begin reading. As I listen, I inwardly revolt. “I can’t read with these people,” I think. As my turn comes, I feel exceedingly confident, and begin reading my piece to great delight. The second piece I read starts with a Latin phrase, including “spiritus” and other recognizable Latin terms. A man scoffs at me from across the table. Other people feel lessened by my proud nature, stifling their humiliated travails with my officialdom. I receive no congratulations. Forget community inspiration.

__________

Book Store

"To visit a book store in your dream, foretells you will be filled with literary aspirations, which will interfere with your other works and labors." (iDream)

___________

Controlled by the mind of unborn dreaming
as our mundane praise sickens the grieving

erasure of a loveless burden

"for the intensity of an aspiring fear?
towards the weird?"

linguistic tribes
pour over their bandaged fingers of torrent
for one emotional quake
...
To the nervous body of tradition
tortured by the hours of sitting

in tragic rooms
oblivious to all the news in the world

of gross and entombed friendships
with the eternally dead

subject

To writing possibilities in the voice
of a suicidal mage

Thanking the lessons of the flesh
in an impoverished state

- excerpt from "a message for the few"

The Achuar Remind Us Not All Dreams Are Visions

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak directly with a Oscar Gutierrez and Jiyukama Irar Milk (the actual narrator of the video linked, not the name incorrectly attributed in the film) about dream interpretation in the Amazon. They told me that all the indigenous people of the Amazon interpret dreams regularly, however, there are two different kinds of dream. The first is the common dream, the second is the vision. Dream are important as they may carry a vision. The dream vision is prophetic and speaks of what will occur. Such a dream is a message from without, while the common dream is simply an internal component of one's personality. 

We also spoke on many other subjects including the use of Ayahuasca, which is a fundamental tradition in Achuar territory. In the old days, the use of Ayahuasca was preceded by three months of fasting (restricted diet), no sexual relations or any negative thoughts, and followed by the same. Nowadays, it is often a simple drink. This is another facet of disrespect for the Achuar and Amazonian culture. We are quickly drinking the sacred fluid of our Mother without thought to vision. 

Oscar, who quickly spoke to me as a good friend, told me that in life we have different food, we have the food we take as an infant, as an adolescent as an adult and as an elder. Just as in life, our spiritual food changes throughout life. I think this is mirrored in society. We need to move on from the food of fossil fuels to a new source of sustenance. 

Hear the Achuar speaking to Calgary in a full presentation VISIT MEDIA CO-OP

__________

With my stepsister and cousins, we traverse a riverine flood. The rich jungle environment encases us in a dense canopy. The sky is revealed through a slim corridor directly above. The river craft glides easily through a welcoming glade. As the river opens up, a mass of white fog blows with violent extremes into our unprotected bow. We careen at the edge of the river, where spindly trees and submerged bushes angle us awkwardly over the final brink of this newfound overflowing mass of storm-drowned winds. The impenetrable beyond, throws us sideways, with escalating velocity as we hold on to a mass of ant-festered branches. Others wildly match our weight on the other side in a chaos of organized adrenaline, concentrated at the core of our one human-bound vessel against the raw throat of nature, howling with supernatural emotion. The sight of the open river, where three massive tributaries open into the glory of the Amazon is a wicked sight to behold on this late morning of disastrous weather, an impasse into the lone being of nature, an uninvited resting place for her untamable heart, calling for the incendiary flood of the world to cry with her. We finally reach out beyond the swamplands. My sister exits from the boat first, muddy and soaked, yet unscathed. We find rest in the scintillating folds of a day passed under the thumb of her gorgeous rage. 

__________

Step-sister

"To dream of a step-sister, denotes you will have unavoidable care and annoyance upon you."

__________

This night, this life,
I have too many things.

In this society, that brings the free to seek
again
the wizardry of greed and foul upbringings of nameless increase.

Our lands, that strove for a scintillating hate
against the enemies of needless suffering.

Believing the want and designed haunts
of spells
of advertised gore.

Shaven religion
perfectly watching

Into the embittered ear
the strange gods of money.

Bastards from wars of holy judgment,
burning at the feet of a character flaw,
bleeding profusely from a nail

Shot, bridges hollow in the tooth of a filthy savior
trapped with anger and speed.

The rats of knives speak in the trunks of battered forests
flee into the naked feeding,
avenues of the poor
treating the flies to an ambush of praise
in the flat, rusted movie of dead order

Morbidity, for a war that drew earth into a mild farce
for the wicked and insane

- excerpt from "Of Sex and Intellect"

The Story of MAY DAY Returns upon Waking

A May Day Garland for 1820 by Samuel William Fores
"Dance away my Friends, I have been the cause of all their fun by your Help and Money - Edward the Instigator!"

"This is the story of the rootless ones. Your bones already know the story, though your mind does not yet understand it. One day, in the waking world, this story will come back to you."

- from "The Witch's Child" a brilliant zine on MAY DAY

___________

In the old-fashioned aesthetics of a New Spain colony, the federal district of Mexico in the 15^th century is featured on a piece of black and white cartography. The historic document is imprinted in my memory as I glare out over the Manhattan skyline. The urban grid lies before me. I am headed towards the last line on the grid, one hundred and something street. Atop a bristling hillock in the strong spring winds, a fair temptress bounds effortlessly over sprigs of dandelion-bloomed grasses, her clothing flaps wildly as she mounts my hip in a leap of embracing lust. She’s asked me to find my way past the blistering outcrop of one staggering urban nightmare, a chaotic mess of colonial history, a Tenochtitlan of North America, sprawling in a frayed mess of abandoned wires and charcoal heat. In an apocalyptic vehicle, I brave the incendiary beyond. 

__________

Heat

"To dream that you are oppressed by heat, denotes failure to carry out designs on your account of some friend betraying you." (iDream)

__________

“as we swallowed awful breaths of meager and sinking failure

she gave it her all and courageously fit into the brew of my panic, and surprise

and we could figure the rains, as they hit charred disdain in our unfeeling dream

of croaking drink, and vile moans 

that troubled our disgraced, fugitive blame”

“as I sought out your Gaelic whispers with a charm for sage-grass forlorn

there spun a hint of deranged angst for the painful distance 

expressed in the age of a silent rasping damage

to condemn an unknowing

in the broken guilt 

that goes aimless and unforgiving

as the bellows of sorrow and the un-chosen regret

of a million graves violating the entrenched sky”

as journeys go

afraid into the wild

calls of a single space.

- excerpt from "Breathtaking Images"